Sleepless in Montana

I was scared. I was really, really scared.

My sweet boy. The boy who never likes to see anyone eat alone. A very "healthy" 11 month old boy (he weighs 23, yeah you heard me, 23 pounds). A boy who gets up on average of twice a night to eat a full 8 ounce bottle.

(Cue horror music here)

No food or drink after midnight.

Yep, I had to get my ordinarily famished young fellow to the hospital for 7 am surgery to put tubes in his ears without feeding him since midnight!!!!

How in the world was I going to do that? The child would surely be screaming those blood curdling howls that make a mother go absolutely batty and want to crawl right out of her own skin. He would be in complete agony. The kind of terrible fit that makes the child have chest heaves when he finally stops crying.

I had known that the tympanostomy was coming and had been dreading this starvation ritual more than the procedure itself by tenfold! I knew the procedure is routine and no one in our family has ever had any complications from anesthesia, so I was ok with it. But ask me to keep food from my child and I dive into the throws of anxiety faster than you can say "BOO"!

I must have woken every hour or so to check the time. I did not want to be late and have to go through this ordeal again. I got up at 11:30 and fed him a bottle so full of rice cereal that I had to clip a nipple to get it to flow through!

Well, LG is typically a very happy boy. He's the kind of baby everyone stares at and then is overjoyed by his reaction...a coy little head tilt and big, teeth-half-in grin. He's so good tempered, that often I have not even known he's had an ear infection until I took him in for a well baby visit. No fever, no crying, no fussiness, and getting up in the night is no clue, as I have explained.

I should have known. I had absolutely nothing to worry about.

He ate his bottle at 11:30. He woke up at 4 am. If I had fed him, he would have gone back to sleep, but since I couldn't...he wanted to play. He cooed and giggled and played like the best boy until 5:30 when we left for hospital. We got within 5 minutes of arriving and he fell asleep! He remained calm all throughout the registration and pre-op and waved goodbye with a smile on his face as the nurse carried my sweet boy off to have the deepest sleep of his short life!

He woke up mad as a hornet, though! Who could blame the little guy? He could hear every sound for the first time ever probably, which must have made the world sound like a freight train two feet away. He was drunk from the anesthesia and although he'll probably have a period in college where he'll deliberately try to make himself feel this way, now is not the time!

As soon as I took him from the nurse though, and gave him his bottle...my sweet boy was back. He ate his bottle while I did the discharge paperwork and we happily went on home.

I thought maybe he might sleep through the night last night since he probably wouldn't wake with ear pain and decide he may as well eat while he's up.

Oh, well. I can't have everything.